Nothing to worry about

Wow. Now there’s a powerful image to show where we are. Click on the image above and you’ll see the percentage of people worried about climate change in various countries. The Netherlands is on the list, all the way down with the climate deniers, right next to the wonderful US of A. Now you try to explain how a supposedly well-educated and liberal northern european country that is partly BELOW SEA-LEVEL ends up there.

9 thoughts on “Nothing to worry about”

You’ve answered your own question: we are below sea level – in every aspect of our lives. We never respond to any threat, until it has threatened us.
We thought we could remain neutral in WWII. We started the Deltawerken after 1953. Inburgering became a problem when citizenship lost its meaning. And now privacy is no problem until proven wrong; as is climate change. It’s just that our focus has changed, but we are are a tolerant country.

There seems to be a correlation between the political stability in a country and the concern of it’s citizens about global warming. Maybe people in countries like Mexico and Indonesia are more likely to be concerned about just anything related to their future regardless of the specific issue.

I don’t want to register with Nielsen Research, but I am also wondering how the survey was conducted. Did they enter the ricefields of Vietnam in order to get a representative sample of the population? When you conduct a survey in Norway or The Netherlands it is easier to include all economic classes in your sample. It is possible that Nielsen only got the answers of the informed elite in the emerging countries where the concern is 90% or higher.

Joking aside: It’s not that powerful. What exactly was the question and to whom, how was it phrased, which terms were used, was it a leading question? Because as you demonstrate above, the whole discussion is a grab-bag of terms that don’t quite mean what people think it means.

“Climate change”: Yes, it does. All the time, since time forever, and anyone who denies it is a loon.

“Man-revertable global warming”: Another kettle of fish entirely, and one I’m not so sure of. We might be better off trying to adapt to the change instead of trying to stop it, as for one we really have only a feint clue about how this planet works, exactly.

Add politicians and lots-of-hype to the mix, stir with a handsome helping of subsidies, business interests and people who are short on facts but big on belief and then it really starts making sense to keep a sceptical outlook.

Keeees: There is a broad (or even extremely broad) scientific consensus that climate change is a) happening, b) mostly man-made, c) potentially catastrophic, d) can be at least partly avoided/mitigated if we really really work on it.

That that broad consensus is not always reflected outside of the scientific community is another matter. Some of this is due to for-pay distortion by stakeholders in the status quo, but a surprising fraction is unpaid useful idiots that would rather see a global conspiracy ran by a struggling environmental movement than by the fossil fuel industry that actually pays/employs our politicians.

You probably see yourself as neither a paid minion of the stakeholders in the status quo nor a useful idiot. Or at least you’re not going to admit it, which is your right.

Just like with creationism, flat earth believers and those that believe there were no landings on the moon, there are plenty of places online where the “climate debate” is raging, no matter how virtually non-existent it is among actual scientists that study the matter.

There’s stakeholders and useful idiots on both sides, and lots of them. Just saying, be careful that you’re not falling for your own side’s hype as you seem to be using some of their talking points.

I’m not denying anything, just observing that it’s gone all political and activist, which is usually where actual honest science and/or new ideas that don’t agree with the status quo take a back seat. Way back.

We’re still figuring out how this planet works. CERN just this week published something new on how clouds work. Can we really be _that_ sure of ourselves yet?

So no, I don’t think that broad scientific consensus is as settled as people make it out to be, if only because the general atmosphere seems to be to lump anyone daring to doubt in with the extreme climate deniers and flat-earthers. Thanks for the demonstration, too.

I totally agree with Maranke. Being pessimistic is easier than doing something. I am looking for young Dutch people, in their twenties, who are critical thinkers of what the future should look like and are concretely doing something with that. Like growing their own food, dumpsterdiving, being minimalist. Do you know any twentysomethings or young initiatives?

I was shocked when I saw that the Netherlands, a liberal, well educated northern european country which is partly underwater ….”is not too worried” about climate change… At first glance, this maybe a sign of indifference, ignoranace, or both. Maybe, just maybe, everyone in the Netherlands knows that they are the worlds best engineers when it comes to holding back the water, and perhaps its this confidence in grand engineering schemes is the cause of “not too much concern…”

I dunno, just a thought…
Remember, when the Brits wanted the Thames barrier, we asked the Dutch to build it. 🙂